People have been asking me how my Christmas went. I’ve been meaning to write down a narrative of the events that transpired, but everything was just too surreal to put down in black and white. Took me a while to digest.

So anyway, here’s what happened:

December 23
We began our Christmas festivities by attending two wakes. The first was for an old family friend, the kind your dad got into scrapes with as a child and got drunk with as a teenager, the kind you wind up calling Tito (Uncle) even though you aren’t really related. The second was for my friend’s father. Both died two days shy of Christmas. Read the rest of this entry »

A batchmate of mine posted this on my Friendster blog recently:

hey, i read your poem published in Philippine Graphic. Asteeg.
arvin (Posted by: Arvin | December 25, 2006 09:33 AM)

*inhale*

!!!!!!!!

*skips giddily around the room with exessive amounts of glee*
*skip skip skip*
*exhales slowly*
*sigh*

Okay. My little moment of joy is finished. Now my question is, DOES ANYBODY KNOW WHERE I CAN GET A COPY OF THE PHILIPPINE GRAPHIC??? They never informed me that I got published. Either that, or my Spamguard ejected their acceptance email into the void.

Anyway. Back to my rejoicing.

*resumes skipping*

I have looked into the eyes of Sheer Terror.

I know now that Sheer Terror is a rather large Labrador named Magic. His lair is somewhere in Umali Subdivision in Los Baños. I was hanging out with Gani and Bom at Bom’s uncle’s house. (So many apostrophes.) The two had gone out to the garage for some manly conversation, perhaps discussing the finer points of Monty Python and the Holy Grail (”Pshaw! It’s just a flesh wound!”). On the otherhand, I had opted to lag behind, since I was still struggling to put on my left boot.

By the time I caught up with them, there he was. The gigantic, friendly, slobbery Labrador otherwise known as Magic. Who is a normally friendly dog. Unfortunately, he had been cooped up for the past few days without being walked, and was therefore as perky as a hundred caffeinated, extremely hormonal jackrabbits. This was no dog. This was the Furry Juggernaut of Doom.

And Bom had just let him out of his cage. Read the rest of this entry »

Hello Monday.

Once again, I find myself cramming. I should have started working on my “unprescribed” assignment yesterday, nay, last week even. Then I wouldn’t be in this jam. But I (and a small team of equally nit-picky, delightfully demented individuals) had to make little painted cutouts of Nativity characters for the kids’ Sunday school last Saturday night. And I was working with my obssessive-compulsive mother who has serious choleric tendencies. She insisted that we finish all  four of the backdrops (one meter by one meter plastic sheets with little pockets to stick the characters in) before Sunday. (Incidentally, the Sunday school teachers only used one of the backdrops during Sunday school. *Sigh* no matter.) We wound up sleeping around one am. Read the rest of this entry »

Thanks to divine intervention, I’m out of my six-month slump. Had to get a great big kick in the ass from God for me to stop being depressed. ) The cure was brutal, but it worked. But I’ll save that story for some other time.

What’s a little disturbing at the moment is the fact that I seem to have shifted—from the Angst-Ridden, Existentialist Would-Be Poet Suffering from a Massive Case of Mental Constipation to Little Miss Sunshine. Oh the horror. 

Read the rest of this entry »

I used to be hooked on chat. It started with an archaic program called NTalk (does anyone remember NTalk???) on the old Unix servers at the university. Then I discovered the cutesy ICQ, with that annoying message alert that sounded like a lemming going “uh-oh!”

And then I discovered mIRC.
Read the rest of this entry »

I just had dinner with a friend and the guy she’s been seeing recently. Read: I just spent the evening playing the third wheel. Not that I mind. This is just one of those things you do for your friends. Like making sure they get home in one piece when they’ve drunk enough alcohol to be able to ignite flammable material just by exhaling. Or listening to them rant about the asshole they’ve been trying to get over for the past six months. It’s one of those things you do because you care about them. And because they would do the same for you. Read the rest of this entry »

I approach the blank page with one thought in mind: one thousand words. It’s a daunting number to aim for, since it’s been a long time since I’ve written anything beyond three hundred words in one sitting. My rhythm is off as well. I remember the happy tap dance of fingers on the keyboard, and the steady stream of words on the screen. But that was ages ago. Now the best I can manage is a halting two-step, with plenty of pauses in between.   

This reminds me of my father’s guitar-playing. A couple of months ago, he decided to start playing classical guitar again. He brushed all the dust off his old pieces, bought a brand new guitar, and started practicing. He began with the basic scales and arpeggios, until his fingers began to remember. He found a bunch of other guys who like to play classical guitar. And then he sat down and tried to play Recuerdos de la Alhambra.   

Read the rest of this entry »

My blog is now two weeks and three days old. After spending two or three nights de-uglifying my blog (and generally slacking off, thesis-wise), my newest obsession is getting more people to visit my blog. I started by telling most of my friends via email and friendster (*tupperware lady impression* “Hi! How’s it going? Hey there’s this url I think you might find interesting…”) Eventually it occurred to me that people were getting tired of the tupperware approach, so, at the suggestion of my cousin, I started a button collection of my own. I’ve lost track of how many blog directories I’ve signed up for, and how many online forms I’ve filled, with ear-drum-rupturing enthusiasm.

Thought for the day, courtesy of mish : “The more interesting your life gets, the less you blog.”

And I’ve been blogging almost every single day. Hmm.

(Crass, I know. )

A mishap befell my spectacles,
as I was peeing in the john,
for as I stood and leaned over to flush,
I forgot that I’d left them on.

The earpiece was slightly wiggly,
they slipped off and suddenly dropped
into the ceramic toilet bowl
with a distubing little plop.

Gingerly I fished them out,
then soaped and disinfected
with every available household cleanser
(cautiously used as directed.)

Though now thoroughly devoid of germs
something’s still wrong with my glasses,
for it seems that everywhere I look,
I see plenty of assholes and asses.